American-European Art Associates, Inc.

GERMAN ARTISTS HAVE ALWAYS UNDERSTOOD that the hand is more expressive, particularly of suffering, than the face. Nowhere in the history of Western art are there such eloquent images of anguish as the hands of Mary and John in Lucas Cranach's Crucifixion, 1503, or Mary and Mary Magdalen in the crucifixion scene of Matthias Grünewald's Isenheim Altarpiece, c. 1510-15. Even in such a different image as Otto Dix's 1926 portrait of Ivar von Lücken, each finger of the distressed hand seems to have an agony all its own.

Dieter Appelt extend; this tradition with his three brilliant series of black-and-white photographs: “Zahlensystem der Massai” (Number system of the Masai), 1977; “Die Befreiung der Finger” (Liberation of the fingers), 1977-79; and “Vergrasung der Hände” (Weed growth of the hands), 1978-79. The images are records of Appelt's performances, the best known documented by “Liberation